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Paladin talents
Starting at level 10, a Paladin can begin spending talent points to gain new abilities and spells, strengthen existing abilities, and specialize how he/she functions. See the entry on Talents for more information about the Talent system. Paladin Talents have undergone significant changes through patch 1.9 to 2.3. Patch 2.3 actually brought the long overdue Retribution Tree revamp. Paladin talent trees Paladins train in three schools: Holy, Protection, and Retribution. Which talent trees the Paladin spends points in determines the Paladin's role in parties and raids. Holy Paladins will mainly be expected to be main healers. Protection Paladins are going to tank. Retribution Paladins will be DPS. Currently, patch 2.3 has modified key talents in the Protection and Retribution trees such as Weapon Expertise (Protection) being renamed Combat Expertise and will also increase Stamina by up to 10% when maxed out. Pursuit of Justice was changed to a three-rank talent that increases movement speed by up to 15% and reduces the chances that the Paladin will be hit by spells by up to 3%. Holy The Holy tree contains talents focused on healing and caster-related buffs. Protection The Protection tree contains talents focused on defense, damage mitigation, damage return and one-handed weapons. A paladin tank would normally invest at least 51 talent points in the protection tree to get Avenger's Shield, although it is not strictly necessary. It is the only ranged ability that a protection paladin has to pull with other than via items or via proximity/judgements or other close range abilities, it bounces and tags a total of 3 targets and applies a 6 second snare to its targets. With 3.0 and inscription, this ability can be modified with a Glyph to increase its damage by 100% while reducing the number of targets hit by 2, making it ideal for tanking hard hitting mobs or bosses that you want to have individual tanks upon. Since patch 2.3, there are more useful talents than the points we can spend, so we see a lot of tanking builds with some minor variation here and there. However, as long as it contains the following core talents, it should be viable: Redoubt (Now with Shield Specialization built into it), Toughness, Improved Righteous Fury, Anticipation, Blessing of Sanctuary, Sacred Duty, One-Handed Weapon Specialization, Holy Shield, Ardent Defender, Combat Expertise, Avenger's Shield, Hammer of the Righteous Deflection. Other talents worth noting for paladin tanks include: Guarded by the Light, which provide some protection against spell damage and reduces mana costs of Holy Shield, Avenger's Shield and Shield of Righteousness; and Blessing of Kings. Reckoning is a very good skill when AOE leveling/farming. With more than four to five mobs keep hitting you, reckoning will be up most of the time. This is a very significant improvement in dps, health regen or mana regen when combined with Seal of Righteousness, Seal of Light, or Seal of Wisdom respectively. Nevertheless, its usefulness in end-game instance tanking is not much, so most tankadins would put the points to some where else at level 70. Concerning PvP, paladin's protection tree is not as designed as the warrior's against enemy spellcasters, since your damage output comes from blocking and being hit by melee damage, and your improved armor and defense will not lower spell damage at all. With Reckoning however, at close proximity to casters, higher damage output may be dealt. Improved Hammer of Justice is excellent if they're trying to cast, so not only do you interrupt them, but you can also get in heals more frequently. Also, with Sacred Duty, you can use Divine Shield while still pummeling spellcasters without slowing or stunning effecting you, and like before, more time for healing as well. Improved Concentration Aura is also useful, especially if you have caster groupmates. Stoicism provides some protection against stun and dispel. A typical healing raiding paladin who selects talents in protection will invest 5 talent points in the protection tree, selecting Blessing of Kings(1/1) and Improved Blessing of Kings(4/4) since an extra 10% to everyone's stats takes the edge off of new encounters and speeds up raid progression. For Retribution Paladins, Divine Strength is a must for the extra 15% strength. Blessing of Kings and Improved Blessing of Kings could be chosen if interested. If Blessing of Kings is chosen, it is basically for the benefit of the raid because Blessing of Might is better for retadins' DPS. Retribution The Retribution tree contains talents focused on damage output, two-handed weapons, holy damage, and damage avoidance. DPS Retribution Paladins: Gone from being the underestimated Paladin spec to becoming a formidable holy melee fighter, the Retribution Paladin brings buffs and debuffs, offhealing, cleansing and excellent damage when properly geared. The Retribution tree has both raid and arena viability and can be of interest to any Paladin who would rather deal damage than take or heal it. For those interested in being a melee damage Paladin, 51 talent points should be invested in the Retribution tree. It is strongly advised that any serious Retribution spec for Divine Storm and Crusader Strike. It is also highly recommended that the Paladin puts 3 points into Sanctified Seals, as it gives a 3% critical bonus to melee, ranged and spells for everyone who attacks the judged target. The most common Retribution builds have at least 51 points in the Retribution tree, and some Retribution Paladins decide to spec for Blessing of Kings bringing more party and raid utility, not to mention being able to give more survivability to their fellow PvP'ers in Arena and Battlegrounds (of course, there may be others in the arena who have Blessing of Kings already). However, people who spec into this build lose some benefits from the Retribution tree. This build is able of putting out a good amount of damage while still bringing excellent raid utility. Several variations of Retribution build exist, such as 0/5/56 or 0/10/51. As for PvP builds, there are a few variations. A common PvP build tends to be 0/16/45, being specced for increased survivability Divine Purpose and for shorter cooldown on your primary stun Improved Hammer of Justice this build is very potent for high end arena play, as your stun when combined with the Gladiator PvP set bonus and the Improved Hammer of Justice talent has its cooldown lowered to 35 seconds, making it quite semi effective as Crowd Control. It is not recommended to spec into the Eye for an Eye talent. There are many issues involved with this talent, such as the Stamina increase with Burning Crusade made it less effective, and that it may break crowd control effects on enemies that have just casted a spell on you. Vindication is an excellent choice, however, as the 20% reduction of all stats can be very useful in many situations. Note, that most bosses are immune to Vindication, but it still serves a purpose when fighting trash mobs, solo'ing, and of course PvP'ing. Some PvP'ing Paladins choose to not use the max rank of their Seal of Command, due to the fact that it may be too mana consuming compared to the damage dealt after the removal of spell damage from Retribution sets, as the Judgement still scales with your spell damage. Rank 1 still has the same proc rate as the max rank. However, you will notice a large decrease of damage done by your Judgement of Command, even without any spell damage (especially when using it against a stunned target). Using Rank 1 also makes skipping the Sanctified Judgements talent more reasonable, and allows redistibution of the points into Divine Purpose for more survivability against physical and ranged attacks. Holy Paladins usually put 5 points in Benediction for the reduced mana cost of seals. Paladin Tanks usually max Benediction and Deflection here. Other retribution tree talents that maybe useful for tankadins include Improved Judgements and Pursuit of Justice. While Retribution Aura is the most frequently used aura for tankadins, it is now too far in the Retribution tree to get Improved Retribution Aura. See also * Paladin Talent Calculator at Official site * Paladin Talent Calculator at Wowhead * Paladin Talent Calculator at Thottbot.com * Paladin Talent Calculator at Panda Hideout * Paladin Talent Calculator at merciless-gilde.com * Paladin Talent Calculator at WorldofWar.se Category:Paladins Category:Paladin talents Category:Talents